Saturday, April 4, 2009

On my soapbox RE: FBC Downtown

Have you ever been hassled by members of First Baptist Church of downtown Jacksonville, just for skating past the church on the sidewalk? I have. Numerous times. Apparently they own the city blocks and all the sidewalks around the church. Weird, huh? Check out what I read today about the church via jacksonville.com. Basically a blogger critical of the church was investigated via a subpoena to Google. A detective, who was a security detail for the church, basically broke the law and outed this guy. The article also illustrates some slanderous words used by the pastor of the church to criticize this blogger. From the blog in question:

My initial comment on the article: how sad to read the depths that Mac Brunson has sunk to. A pastor, a man supposedly called by God Himself to love and shepherd Christians, that he would unequivocally declare to a news reporter that I, one of his sheep until just recently, am "obsessive compulsive", and that I am "not stable at all", and the real humdinger that "What you're dealing with here is sociopath". Mac suddenly knows my mental state, when he has never met me, my wife, or my kids. Not one single conversation with the man and he declares me to be a sociopath. People who know me at FBC Jax and my new church and elsewhere know this is not true and just a pathetic attempt by Mac to attack the credibility of one of his critics. The sad truth is that Mac telling a news reporter this lie about one of his sheep speaks more to Mac's lack of character and lack of a pastor's heart than it does my mental state. Thank you, pastor, who never met me or my wife or my kids - for lying about me to Jeff Brumley - but I do forgive you, brother.

Sure, you might say this has nothing to do with skateboarding. But I'll tell you this: I skateboard downtown regularly. I hang out downtown regularly, and the only thing I have ever seen come from FBC is bullshit regulation due to the church's stranglehold on the city, and getting kicked off a SIDEWALK for not looking the right way. If you want to know why there isn't more cool stuff downtown, here is your reason. Because FBC is downtown. They ran off the Film industry back in the day, and they haven't stopped keeping people out since. So here is what I have to say to First Baptist Church: Until you start publicly doing something positive for the community you reside in, that community is going to continue to look down upon you. Right now, it's looking like you'd rather not associate with the people in your neighborhood. And god knows they don't want to associate with you.